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Serial killer link pondered in kidnapping
PORT ALLEN, Louisiana (CNN) -- Police were trying to determine Thursday whether the kidnapping of the wife of Louisiana's imprisoned former elections commissioner might be linked to a serial killer believed responsible for the slayings of four area women. "We're going to treat it as such right now because of the proximity of all of the other homicides," said West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Randall Andre. Mari Anne Fowler was abducted Christmas Eve in front of a Subway sandwich shop in Port Allen, just across the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge. A surveillance camera recorded the kidnapping and the tape, being analyzed by the FBI, showed a white Chevrolet pickup truck was involved, Andre said. Authorities say DNA evidence has linked the same person to the slayings of three Baton Rouge women from September 2001 to July of this year and to the November killing of a Lafayette woman 50 miles away. (See story) Earlier this week, Lafayette Parish police said they were looking for a white Chevrolet truck seen in November near where the most recent victim's vehicle was found. A witness saw a similar truck near where the body of one of the Baton Rouge victims was later found in July. Though no definitive connection has been made between Fowler's abduction and the murders, Andre said his investigators have met with members of serial killings task force. The search for Fowler continued Thursday with helicopters and all-terrain vehicles combing areas around the abduction site. Fowler's husband, Jerry Fowler -- Louisiana's former longtime elections chief -- is serving a five-year term in a federal prison in Texas after pleading guilty in 2000 to charges of accepting kickbacks from voting machine vendors. He declared bankruptcy in October 2001, reporting more than $1.6 million in debts, according to local media reports.
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